EFRA CHAIR WARNS INHERITANCE TAX RAIDS RISK ‘BREAKING UP FARMS’

EFRA Chair warns inheritance tax raids risk “breaking up farms” and “devastating agricultural sector.” Orkney and Shetland MP, Alistair Carmichael, also urged a prompt review of the UK’s food and environment strategy.

The Chair of Parliament’s Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Committee, The Rt Hon Alistair Carmichael MP, has warned that incoming changes to inheritance tax rules risk forcing families to “break up or sell their farms”, while urging the Government to adopt a clearer strategy on food security, land use, and environmental protections.

Speaking at an event hosted by political consultancy Whitehouse Communications at the National Liberal Club yesterday, Carmichael – who grew up in a farming family and represents the rural constituency of Orkney and Shetland – said DEFRA lacked the long-term vision needed to support agricultural communities.

He criticised what he called a “tax-first, purpose-later” approach in government – arguing that inheritance tax policy was being shaped without a proper understanding of its impact on the resilience of family farms. “If your inheritance tax bill is going to break up the farm, then something has gone very wrong,” he told the audience, adding that farmers needed a system built on “honest discussion – not administrative guesswork”.

Carmichael warned that the absence of a clear food security strategy was leaving farmers exposed to mounting global and domestic pressures – from the ongoing war in Ukraine, long considered Europe’s “breadbasket”, to U.S. President Donald Trump’s renewed talk of tariff barriers – alongside long-standing weaknesses in the UK’s own production base. Without decisive intervention, he said, output could fall by as much as 32% by 2050, citing recent cautions by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Science and Technology in Agriculture.

“Food security is national security,” Carmichael underscored, warning that falling production coupled with unclear Government priorities and delays to vital schemes such as the Sustainable Farming Incentive had left farmers “waiting, again, for clarity that never arrives”. The committee chair argued that there remained a “fundamental lack of strategic vision” within DEFRA, with decisions too often taken without any recognition of their long-term consequences for domestic food production.

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